I just came across some lovely illustrations of how the filler ‘sort of’ adds meaning. (Thanks, Tom!) It’s a quote from the comedian Demetri Martin:
‘Sort of’ is such a harmless thing to say. ‘Sort of’. It’s just a filler. ‘Sort of’ – it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, ‘sort of’ means everything.
Like after ‘I love you’
or ‘You’re going to live’
or ‘It’s a boy!’
To see Demetri deliver it – see three minutes into this video…
When I’m presented with two alternatives, ‘I don’t mind’ seems like a logical response to me.
You: ‘Coffee or tea?’
Me: ‘I don’t mind’.
It sounds amenable – indicates a pleasant, easy-going sort of attitude and says ‘I don’t want to impose my wishes on you. I’ll go with the flow’.
An AmE equivalent could be ‘I don’t care’, but that smacks of apathy to my British ear. I’ve heard myself using it in mission-critical situations sometimes, where I know I won’t have time to clarify. But even after ten years in the US, it doesn’t trip off my tongue easily.
So most evenings, you’ll hear me having a conversation along these lines with my ‘merican husband:
Him: What would you like for dinner tonight? We have salmon and flounder in the freezer.
Me: I don’t mind
Him: Yeah, but salmon or flounder?
Me: I don’t mind
Him: Yeah, but what don’t you mind?
By: Susan Johnson
I was in a restaurant where my server was wearing green clothes, a shamrock necklace and sporting a name badge saying ‘Kelly’. ‘Kelly’, I said. ‘You must be Irish’. ‘Why, yes’, she said with smiling eyes, so I asked where she was from.
It turned out that Kelly had been born locally and had never actually been to Ireland, but many years ago one of Kelly’s great, great, great (and maybe another ‘great’ or two) grandparents had immigrated from Ireland to the US. So Kelly felt herself to be Irish. Truth is I think I might have more Irish blood in me than Kelly but it has never occurred to me to think of myself as Irish.
This attention to origins means surnames carry extra meaning here. I’m not sure it works for ‘African American’ because I believe many slaves were given the name of the slave owner, but many surnames signal things like ‘Irish American’, ‘Jewish American’, ‘Polish American’ and ‘Italian American’.
I don’t fully understand all the connotations that come with the labels, but people seem to look at each other’s surnames and employ them to identify connections and make assumptions. I think they might be rather like old school ties in the UK and there’s a secret code operating beneath the surface here.
While upbeat optimism often seems to be the name of the game in AmE, it doesn’t seem to apply to US weather forecasts.
I’ve been learning a new set of terminology to know when to apply the sun block here as they tend to paint a grimmer picture.
If a British weather report says ‘partly cloudy’, I expect grey skies, a chill wind and dull, dull, dull. It’s been a delight to discover that here the exact same forecast can mean temperatures in the 90s/30s, bright blue skies and a few pretty white puffs floating across the heavens.
By: cuatrok77
Apparently something like ‘Are you busy?’ is a pretty common greeting in Chinese. Wow! That could cause a bit of confusion. I loved an example they give:
A. Lao Zhang, jin tian ni mang ma? ( Old Zhang, are you busy today?)
B. hen mang/ bu tai mang. (Very busy/Not very busy.)
In BrE and AmE ‘Are you busy?’ is often an indirect request for help and attention. So I’d have thought a more logical response would be something like:
B. Less of the ‘old’ – What do you want?
Click here for more on an AmE greeting and here for more on indirect requests
